Hand and Ring

"To you?"

"Yes. I'm of the make to stand long runs; besides I am no novice at athletic sports of any kind. More than one race has owed its interest to the efforts of your humble servant. 'Tis my pet amusement, you see, as off-hand drawing is yours, and is likely to be of as much use to me, eh?"

"Hickory, you are chaffing me."

"Think so? Do you see that five-barred gate over there? Well, now keep your eye on the top rail and see if I clear it without a graze or not."

"Stop!" exclaimed Mr. Byrd, "don't make a fool of yourself in the public street. I'll believe you if you say you understand such things."

"Well, I do, and what is more, I'm an adept at them. If I can't make that run in the time requisite to show that Mansell could have committed the murder, and yet arrive at the station the moment he did, I don't know of a chap who can."

"Hickory, do you mean to say you will make this run?"

"Yes."

"With a conscientious effort to prove that Orcutt's scheme of defence is false?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"To-morrow."

"While we are in court?"

"Yes."

Byrd turned square around, gave Hickory a look and offered his hand.

"You are a good fellow," he declared, "May luck go with you."

Hickory suddenly became unusually thoughtful.

"A little while ago," he reflected, "this fellow's sympathies were all with Mansell; now he would risk my limbs and neck to have the man proved guilty. He does not wish Miss Dare to be questioned again, I see."

"Hickory," resumed Byrd, a few minutes later, "Orcutt has not rested the defence upon this one point without being very sure of its being unassailable."

"I know that."

"He has had more than one expert make that run during the weeks that have elapsed since the murder. It has been tested to the uttermost."

"I know that."

"If you succeed then in doing what none of these others have, it must be by dint of a better understanding of the route you have to take and the difficulties you will have to overcome. Now, do you understand the route?"

"I think so."

"You will have to start from the widow's door, you know?"

"Certain."

"Cross the bog, enter the woods, skirt the hut – but I won't go into details. The best way to prove you know exactly what you have to do is to see if you can describe the route yourself. Come into my room, old fellow, and let us see if you can give me a sufficiently exact account of the ground you will have to pass over, for me to draw up a chart by it. An hour spent with paper and pencil to-night may save you from an uncertainty to-morrow that would lose you a good ten minutes."

"Good! that's an idea; let's try it," rejoined Hickory.

And being by this time at the hotel, they went in. In another moment they were shut up in Mr. Byrd's room, with a large sheet of foolscap before them.

"Now," cried Horace, taking up a pencil, "begin with your description, and I will follow with my drawing."

"Very well," replied Hickory, setting himself forward in a way to watch his colleague's pencil. "I leave the widow's house by the dining-room door – a square for the house, Byrd, well down in the left-hand corner of the paper, and a dotted line for the path I take, – run down the yard to the fence, leap it, cross the bog, and make straight for the woods."

"Very good," commented Byrd, sketching rapidly as the other spoke.

"Having taken care to enter where the trees are thinnest, I find a path along which I rush in a bee-line till I come to the glade – an ellipse for the glade, Byrd, with a dot in it for the hut. Merely stopping to dash into the hut and out again – "

"Wait!" put in Byrd, pausing with his pencil in mid-air; "what did you want to go into the hut for?"

"To get the bag which I propose to leave there to-night."

"Bag?"

"Yes; Mansell carried a bag, didn't he? Don't you remember what the station-master said about the curious portmanteau the fellow had in his hand when he came to the station?"

"Yes, but – "

"Byrd, if I run that fellow to his death it must be fairly. A man with an awkward bag in his hand cannot run like a man without one. So I handicap myself in the same way he did, do you see?"

"Yes."

"Very well, then; I rush into the hut, pick up the bag, carry it out, and dash immediately into the woods at the opening behind the hut. – What are you doing?"

"Just putting in a few landmarks," explained Byrd, who had run his pencil off in an opposite direction. "See, that is the path to West Side which I followed in my first expedition through the woods – the path, too, which Miss Dare took when she came to the hut at the time of the fearful thunderstorm. And wait, let me put in Professor Darling's house, too, and the ridge from which you can see Mrs. Clemmens' cottage. It will help us to understand – "

"What?" cried Hickory, with quick suspiciousness, as the other paused.

But Byrd, impatiently shaking his head, answered:

"The whole situation, of course." Then, pointing hastily back to the hut, exclaimed: "So you have entered the woods again at this place? Very well; what then?"

"Well, then," resumed Hickory, "I make my way along the path I find there – run it at right angles to the one leading up to the glade – till I come to a stony ledge covered with blackberry bushes. (A very cleverly drawn blackberry patch that, Byrd.) Here I fear I shall have to pause."

"Why?"

"Because, deuce take me if I can remember where the path runs after that."

"But I can. A big hemlock-tree stands just at the point where the woods open again. Make for that and you will be all right."

"Good enough; but it's mighty rough travelling over that ledge, and I shall have to go at a foot's pace. The stones are slippery as glass, and a fall would scarcely be conducive to the final success of my scheme."